Tribute to my Dad
The Lord mercifully, took Dad to his reward on May 1, 2020. He has suffered physically for the past few years and a fall in 2019 forced him to be bedridden. We had prayed that he would not suffer long on this earth. The following morning I wrote this tribute to my earthly father.
A Tribute to Dad - Charles Andrew Davis Jr.
September 25, 1936 – May 1, 2020
I have the privilege of being his first name sake. I am now one of his many points of legacy. His legacy flows through me to my three kids and to their kids. One bears his name as well – Charles Andrew Davis IV. His legacy flows through my spiritual influence in his extended faith family around the world.
Dad did not have an easy road. He was born into poverty. His father died before his first birthday. He worked early in life and turned the money over to his mother to care for the family. It was an austere beginning, but he overcame.
Dad was raised with a strong moral compass rooted in his faith in Jesus Christ.
He honored his mother. Sometimes my obedience was exhorted not through the logic of the request but with the simple words, “because she is your mother.”
He unconditionally loved his wife. As she departed in later years through dementia, Dad repeatedly expressed how much he missed her.
He gave his two children a clear earthly model of the steadfast and faithful love of the heavenly father. They grew up knowing that they were loved.
He gave himself to his vocation as an executive and modeled for me that work could be worship as much as singing praise at church on Sunday.
Work was worship but he never worshipped his work. Faith and family were loyalties pulling him away from that obsession.
He gave himself to his avocation as a leader in the local church. He truly lived out the adage of the church father Cyprian, “if God is your father, the church is your mother.”
His personality and life experience formed three prominent qualities from my perspective – honor, loyalty, and hard work.
Honor. It began with his mother but extended to other authorities in his life. I only saw him visibly angry a few times – once when someone inappropriately challenged his pastor in public. Dad was not yet a leader in this church, but he stood, called for the elders to step up and when they failed, he calmly escorted the lack-of-honor voice from the church building. Dad honored the authoritative office.
Loyalty. It was formed in his unconditional love for his wife. Mom was not easy. She was wounded but never really relieved of the torment until she entered dementia. Dad too was wounded and never fully entered into a fully healed soul on this side. Even so, he did not strike back from his woundedness but chose to love Mom. He was unbending in that love.
Hard work. Dad worked hard on the job. Dad worked hard at the church. Dad worked hard at home. He did his own landscaping – raking the ground, planting the seed and trees, watering and pruning them into health. He cut his own grass (until I was old enough to take over). He painted his own house. He changed his own oil. He washed his own car. Now some of this was out of his frugality but the other side of the coin was his value of hard work. He instilled in me that no one gets a free meal in life – work for it.
Dad and I were opposites in personality. I have come to learn that personality is a mix of DNA, social nurture, and life experience. So, I am much of who I am today because of Dad’s presence in my formative years. His unconditional love early gave me a foundation from which I could see the world through a lens of God’s favor and bounty – a world of opportunity.
It meant that we almost had to be opposites. His earliest formation did not include all the benefits of my own. As a result, he found it difficult to take risks – I had to! He struggled to make a decision and often decisions were made for him by his failure to act – I couldn’t wait, I had to act! He played it safe – I could not! I took the best from Dad – honor, loyalty, hard work – and somehow escaped the worst. As a result, I have my own worsts and an enlarged set of bests. Dad made it all possible. I am grateful.
Dad did not understand me. “What airport are you in now?” “What country are you going to next week?” “You wrote another book?” Even so, he was proud of his son that he did not understand. I carried his same honor for authority, loyalty and unconditional love toward wife, kids, and grandkids, work ethic, and commitment to God through Jesus Christ.
He learned to express that pride later in life through our weekly phone call on Sundays. He would see the number on his phone and answer, “hello my son, whom I love and in whom I am well pleased.” To which, I would respond, “hello Pops, in whose pleasure I take delight.” We would both chuckle, in a way of saying, that this ritual made us feel that all was right with our world.
I carried his name. Charles Andrew Davis III. I also carried the name of his father, whom he had never really known. I also carried his father’s vocation – a minister of the Word – which Dad honored and supported. Me being a preacher meant Dad had to give me up in the same way that Elkanah and Hannah gave up Samuel long ago. My calling to vocational ministry meant that I could not always be with him on holidays – I had responsibility in the church. When God guided that calling to an international setting, we took his grandkids to two other continents for 10 years. When Dad offered me on the altar as a baby, he did not know how much it was going to cost him.
However, he had no way of imagining how it would be part of his legacy. We have ministered to thousands of people in dozens of countries. We have led a life of influence that bears fruit well beyond the boundaries of our biological family. I am not sure how much Dad embraced a gospel of the kingdom theology but his tribute to King Jesus grows daily. There are other people on this earth who did not know Dad but are grateful for the opportunities that he created for me by giving a stable beginning to my life.
Memories of Dad that bring a smile are many.
He took me to my first Cleveland Indians game. The smell of cigars still evokes that memory.
He spanked me – totally politically incorrect today – but I think it was his most difficult expression of love toward me. And so needed for this wild stallion.
He could hit a softball a country mile.
He devastated buffet tables and had a hard time keeping weight on.
He played pepper and tossed the baseball with me about every night in the summer. And we had backyard football games every Saturday in the fall with the neighbors.
He loved Mom. He stayed with Mom.
He absorbed ping-pong paddles, tennis balls, and elbows from a competitive son who did not like when his father seemed to be letting him win.
He called his daughter Judy “gal,” which I have adopted in speaking of my Linnea.
I took him to his first Cleveland Browns game – we had to work through that Sabbath restriction thing to get him there later in life.
He loved Ingrid.
Our Sunday phone mantras. Dad: “I prayed for you this morning.” Me: “thanks for praying, I need the prayer and you need the practice.” Ritual of stability! We repeated it on about every call when I was still pastoring a church.
He warmed up to my love of wine and actually enjoyed sitting on the porch while I smoked a cigar – we had to work through that legalistic thing to get him there later in life.
He loved Christian, Linnea and Jordan, and took on their spouses Sasha and Uriah as his own grandkids.
He was highly honored to have another name sake – Charles Andrew Davis IV – his great grandson, who is part of the next generation of legacy.
He experienced God’s mercy in being taken now after a couple of years of physical struggle and not lingering longer in bed. God heard our prayer.
Things that annoyed me about my father – many. Like me, some of his strengths were also his weaknesses when not tempered by a competing value. However, these are not worth recounting. Dad had his own pilgrimage in life. I forgave him long ago for those things that were offensive. They still annoyed me when they manifested in recent years but that is the nature of relationship as he modeled it for me – honor, loyalty, and the hard work of unconditional love. I live into the next chapter with no sense of bondage to the past and great celebration of my Dad.
Today, he has his reward of a life lived out of the overflow of the Heavenly Father’s love. To be absent from the body is to be present with Christ. I do not know how it goes in heaven, but I wonder. Is he cognizant of being with his earthly father for the first time? What is it like to be with his mother who suffered in bed for at least 10 years at the end of her earthly life? Does he recognize his sister Ruth who went before him? Is he waiting for Mom to come walking around the corner? Do the saints join the great intercessor Jesus, in asking for mercy for the aging saints who languish with broken bodies and lost minds on earth? Can he see from the cheering section of heaven that his faith and family legacy are growing daily through his heritage?
“Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord . . . blessed is the man whose quiver is full” (Psalm 127:3ff).
“Your children will be like olive shoots around your table . . . behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord” (Psalm 128:3ff).
Earthly father, Charles Andrew Davis Jr., today I celebrate you, a good dad.
Heavenly father, today I praise and thank you, you have blessed us through a good dad and have proven once again to be the Good, Good Father!
